Yet More Summer Photos

At a local summer festival my girls got their dancing shoes on to the tunes of a local band. They started dancing in front of the stage. Before long, they were ON the stage. I didn't know whether to be embarrassed, proud or jealous!

Hard to tell by the photo, but my layout is actually a deep pink and mint green. I used some of my new products here - the metallic hearts, the chipboard flowers and the rub on stitches. The transparent frame for the girls' faces is by Colorbok. I bought a package of them a few months back, but this is the first one I've used. I really like the effect.

Product Review - Photo Corner Brads

I recently picked up a clearance marked package of photo corner brads. These were "Spare Parts" by The Paper Studio, a line specifically marketed at Hobby Lobby Stores. I thought they were cute and colorful - bright pink, yellow and green - and would add some interest to my layouts. I finally got around to using some of them yesterday.

I was really disappointed with this product. Take another look at my photo. Because the prongs are short and are positioned on the edges of the brad I found the brads really difficult to use. First, I had a hard time figuring out the placement of the brad. Then, I had to make two incisions into my paper instead one. Finally, when I was done, because the prongs were kind of pulling against each other, I had a hole twice the size of the prong visible on my layout. I was not happy.

I took the brad out and thought about trying to reposition it, but was afraid I'd do irreparable damage to my photo. In the end, I bent the prongs until they popped off, and then I just stuck the brad to my page with some sticky dots. I used four of these photo corners on my layout, pulling the prongs off each one before use. What's worse? They look okay, but they don't really "pop" off the page like I hoped they would - no more so than paper photo corners would, and paper corners would have been a heck of a lot easier and cheaper!

I checked Hobby Lobby's website and found more of photo corner brads, although most of them have prongs in the center of the brad, not off the edges like those that I purchased. Their design does look a little easier to use (one hole vs. two). I might like to try them one day, but I'm in no rush.

Enjoyment? None
Frustration? High
Enhanced Layout? Not enough to outweigh frustration level
Purchase Again? Not those same brads.

Product Reviews?

Okay, so if you read my last post you know that I'm relatively new to this whole scrapbooking thing, but I LOVE it! One other thing that you must know about me is that I am pretty frugal. Now you might be asking yourself, how do I reconcile these two thing things? Can you scrapbook on a dime? I do.

I don't spend a lot of money on my paper and embellishments. I was lucky enough to have some great friends pass on a ton of scrapbook paper to me along with a lot of embellishments. What supplies I do buy I get off a clearance rack or an everything's-a-dollar store, or yard sales. But this post is not about my thrifty crafting. This post is about me potentially writing product reviews.

I'm sure there are others out there like me who either can't or won't spend a lot of money on scrapbook stuff. So when a friend suggested that I write a few product reviews, I started thinking about it. Would anyone care what I thought of a product? Why should they?

In the end, I decided I would try writing a couple reviews primarily because 1) I might save someone a bit of aggravation by identifying an item as a dud and 2) I'm just a regular gal fumbling my way through most of my layouts, and if I can use it and love it, chances are you will too.